Cooked
Even though I’m resoundingly Scottish I admit to being an observer of England cricket, my excuse being that if other UK nationals are good enough, Lords will grab them.
For some time now I’ve been observing the decline and fall of the one day side. Finally the hapless selectors have ditched their hapless captain, but they have appointed in his place a hapless Irishman whose recent form is worse than he guy he’s replacing.
All this has come on the back of the selectors’ axing of their best player as the shambles unfolds. Seems to me that the developing shambles goes back to the appointment of the current managing director of Cricket England. Get shot of Mr Downton and bring back KP and everything will be better.
Categories: Sport
Quintin Jardine's blog 
You sound a bit like Piers Morgan!
You do realise I can bar people from this blog? FWIW, a very high-ranking officer in the ECB used to be a client of my company. I suspect he employed Downton because he came cheap. (Before you ask, we were always competitively priced as long as we were paid on time.)
Probably the first and last time you would be compared to him! FWIW I agree with your sentiments – Downton was a strange choice (he wasn’t that good a cricketer and, in my view, only got caps because it was a historically poor period for keepers after the luxury of Knott and Taylor) and it may be that he was the cheapest – he may also have been the only one prepared to do the job on the terms offered. I think Pietersen should still be in the side, he may have seemed distracted, but wouldn’t you if you were constantly being ignored when have both experience and skill that would aid the team?
If you block me I might have to stop reading the Skinner books – and I don’t want to do that!